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Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Conventions | A labor union that represents hotel workers embroiled in a fight with Disney hotels has warned organizers of Comic-Con International that if they move the convention to Anaheim, they could find their “future events caught in the middle of a bitter labor dispute that could jeopardize their success.” Unite Here Local 11 has been been in a standoff with Disney over the company’s proposal to increase the amount hotel workers contribute to health-insurance coverage to a level that would represent a week’s pay for employees who make $11 an hour. [LA Weekly]

Passings | Mark Evanier reports that Howard “Howie” Post, a mainstay of comics and animation, passed away last week, reportedly due to Alzheimer’s. He was 83. He wrote and illustrated funny-animal comics for DC beginning in the 1940s, and is often credited with helping to create Spooky, Hot Stuff the Little Devil and other characters for Harvey Comics. He worked for Marvel in the 1950s and again in the ’80s, drawing titles like Heathcliff and Strawberry Shortcake for the publisher’s Star kids line. Post also created the comic strip The Dropouts, which was syndicated from 1968 to 1981. [News from ME]

Publishing | CBR News Editor Kiel Phegley considers Hope Larson’s recent survey of female comics readers: “… Just looking at how women have been introduced to comics so far, the idea that we’ve got one method that’s inadequate for what we’d all like to see in terms of readership expansion and another method (TV tie-ins) that’s either shrinking (anime) or being pushed more and more boy-centric (superhero ‘toons) is really disheartening and scary to me.” [The Cool Kids Table]

Awards | Voting is open for the Eagle Awards, the annual British fan awards established in 1976. [The Eagle Awards]

Creators | Gary Tyrrell asks cartoonist Jess Fink why her work keeps getting stolen for use as T-shirt designs and the like: “Every time I get an email about some Cafe press store selling cookie loves milk rip-offs or a big name department store selling a trace or some shop in Hong Kong printing exact copies it just completely ruins my day. You don’t get paid an awful lot to make shirt designs so feeling like you are getting exploited is never fun. If it were just something similar someone made that they weren’t selling it would be a completely different story, but I know these places are making money off of something that is mine.” [Fleen]

Creators | Brian Heater talks to Jonathan Rosenberg about the recent decision to place his long-running webcomic Goatson hiatus: “It’s very hard to get into a comic when there’s 13 years of backstory to catch up on. People get very intimidated. I love that stuff, and a lot of people have been telling me, ‘that’s what I loved about Goats.’ But for the majority of people, it’s very hard to wrap your head around that.” [The Daily Cross Hatch]